Opening Night

Typecast Open House

Chill out with our friends at Typecast, meet fellow attendees and enjoy the local craic as you fill up on tasty grub and free drinks. Now that’s what we call a warm welcome to our city. Drop by their studio and join the festivities.

Dribbble Meetup

Grab a pen and paper (and some slick Dribbble swag to go with it), and join us for a night of sketching. You post your best work to Dribbble, and we’ll give out prizes to the best shots, including a brand new Wacom Bamboo tablet.

Tue / 12th

Film

Sign Painters

Dir., Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, 2012

Sign Painters, the first anecdotal history of the craft of sign painting, features the stories of more than two dozen dedicated practitioners, their time-honored methods, and their appreciation for quality and craftsmanship, working in cities throughout the United States.

Design Is One: Lella & Massimo Vignelli

Dir., Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra, 2012

Leaders on the frontline of the design profession, the Vignellis continue to be mentors to other designers. Design Is One brings us into the work and everyday moments of the Vignellis’ world, capturing their intelligence and creativity, as well as their humanity and humor.

Stripped

Dir., Dave Kellett and Fred Schroeder, 2013

Stripped is a love-letter to comic strips, including over 90 interviews with the world’s best cartoonists to talk about the art form they love, why it’s so beloved, how they’re navigating this dicey period between print and digital, and what happens to it as newspapers die.

Blade Runner: Final Cut

Dir., Ridley Scott, 1982

In a cyberpunk vision of the future, Rick Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specializes in terminating replicants, human clones but with fixed lifespans. When four escape from an off-world colony to Earth, he reluctantly agrees to one more assignment to hunt them down.

Day

Day Trip: Whiskey Distilling

Take a tour of The Old Bushmills Distillery, the world-renowned Irish distillery founded in 1608, and learn from the hundred year old history of Bushmills. You’ll have a chance to explore, learn about the distilling process, and end your tour with a dram of premium Irish whiskey.

10–3pm

Day Trip: Mountain Bicycle Trek

The Mourne Mountains, the highest range in Northern Ireland, are a natural marvel, deep with history and hidden sights. We’ll head out on bicycles for a leisurely exploration of the mountains, Game of Thrones fans may even spot a few familiar locations.

10–11am

Morning Yoga

Ease into the day with a private class of Vinyasa Flow, a creative and evolving form of yoga which take puts your breath in command of a whole body experience. (Beginners welcome. No need to pack your yoga pants, casual clothing is a-ok.)

11–12:30pm/
1:30–3pm/
3:30–5pm

Metalcraft & Blacksmithing

One of the most historic and time-honoured skills, we’ll be joined by accomplished blacksmith Eamonn Higgins, who’ll teach you how to work with steel. You’ll even get to make a your own steel hexnut to take home.

Rumble Labs Open House

Join local development shop Rumble Labs for a game of table tennis or some Mario Kart, or steal a quiet desk in the corner to get some work done. Bonus: from 5pm onwards they’ll host an evening of attendee-led lightning talks.

Cocktail Making

As any previous Build attendee will attest, The Malmaison Hotel is home to one of the best cocktail bars in the city. Put on your bowtie and waistcoat, and learn how to make some classic cocktails with a resident expert.

Johann Sebastian Joust Tournament

Johann Sebastian Joust is a video game without graphics, a mix of battle and dance, where 2 to 7 players have to keep their motion-sensing Move controllers still and try to knock off their opponents at the same time in a fun and frenetic battle to be the last man standing.

10pm – late

Build Music

This year, Music returns to close out Wednesday, featuring Chipzel, an independent chiptunes musician who uses Gameboys to create energetic, melodic dance tracks, some of which you might already have heard on Super Hexagon’s OST. Support from Casion.

Thu / 14th

Conference

At the heart of Build is our conference, this year taking place in a brand new venue, The MAC. Watch and listen as six of our industry’s brightest minds explore what we do and who we are as designers.

Opening Remarks

10:15am

David Cole

Applied Discovery

Over the next years, interactive designers will continue to broaden their domain and expand their responsibility. Owning an increasingly large share of the process means our traditional principles and approaches become decreasingly applicable. To continue producing our best work, we must reconsider fundamental aspects of design: our principles, our methods of evaluation, and our sources of inspiration.

About David

David Cole has spent most of his design career working on interactive products. Currently a product designer at Quora, David was formerly a founder of Sleepover, a design studio focusing on boutique and experimental online publishing. He’s also previously worked for Disrupto, Etherpad, Disqus, and Fluther.

Break

11:20am

Nicole Fenton

Writing for Beginners

The beginner’s mind is eager to learn and open to possibilities. That’s the sort of approach we need as designers: a playful, messy, and curious one. So let’s talk about writing as a practice and a way forward—as something beginners do. We’ll explore how writing and design relate to each other, work through the difficulties of communicating, and find new places to begin.

About Nicole

Nicole Fenton is an independent writer and editor. She previously led content projects at Facebook and the Apple Online Store. Her writing appears in Contents, Offscreen, and Web Standards Sherpa. Nicole lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their incredibly small dog.

Paul Soulellis

Resistance

The promise of branding and code has transformed the way we work and think. Speed, ubiquity, instantaneity—and perfection—are design’s new values. We’ve absorbed code’s ideals so deeply that we’re driven to perform to unrealistic standards. What does an act of resistance look like in design culture today? Opening up to slowness, non-narrative experience and chance encounters is a way to counter the acceleration, and give way to the sublime.

About Paul

Paul Soulellis is an artist and creative director, maintaining his studio in Long Island City, NY. He founded the strategic design firm Soulellis Studio in 2001 and has produced award-winning work for clients like TED, Cornell University, Esri and the Rockefeller Foundation. He also curates Library of the Printed Web, teaches an experimental book studio at Purchase College, and participates in book fairs internationally. His written work has appeared in The Manual and Communication Arts.

Lunch (Provided)

2:30pm

Leslie Jensen-Inman

Designing to Learn

We’ve reached a point where non-designers understand the value of design. This has lead to an increase in demand for design talent. In the past, we would have turned to institutions of higher education to help us find new talent, however, today’s graduates often finish school without the skills they need to thrive in a professional design setting.

There is a massive gap between what students learn and what industry needs. This skills gap leaves graduates unable to find jobs and hiring companies unable to find talent. How we approach this challenge will affect the continued relevance and value of design.

About Leslie

Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman is a designer, speaker, author, and educator. She connects industry, education, and community. Leslie is Co-founder of the Unicorn Institute, where she works to improve the state of design education. Creative Director and Co-Author of InterACT with Web Standards: A holistic approach to web design, Leslie has written articles for publications such as A List Apart, The Pastry Box, Ladies in Tech, and .net Magazine.

Jason Scott

The City On The Edge Of Whatever

The era of the Hot Internet Startup has been joined by the era of the Hot Internet Shutdown. Not content to enjoy a slow fade, online worlds and sites die in flaming wreckage, short warning, and permanent, irrevocable erasure. That’s the story, but it doesn’t have to end there. A growing collection of people are asking the tough questions, demanding action, and changing where the end lies. Let’s talk about our relationship with these computers and their storage, and what your online world means when someone switches it off.

About Jason

Jason Scott is the “free-range archivist” at the Internet Archive, where he reaches out to the world and lets them know there’s a non-profit dedicated to saving petabytes of the Internet and digital content. Sometimes he does it very loudly indeed. He is also a documentary filmmaker, historian, and irritant.

Break

4:10pm

Frank Chimero

What Screens Want

Screens are the primary material of interaction and interface design. We’ve been talking about what it means to design natively for screens for ages, but with the prevalence of touch screens and the redesign of iOS, the topic has been rekindled with more passion. Unfortunately, discussion has devolved into a pendulum swing between “flat design” and skeuomorphic approaches, because we haven’t taken the time to consider what screens want. Screens, of course, don’t have desires, but every material does have a grain, and that grain suggests the material’s identity and the best way to use it. So, what if we listened to screens, considered their origin, and searched for patterns? And what if they told us the way forward had nothing to do with how things looked?

About Frank

Frank Chimero is a designer and writer from New York. His 2010 Build talk, The Shape of Design, turned into a book by the same name.

Closing Remarks

After Party

After you’ve had the chance to get some dinner, come grab a well-earned pint and wind-down at the after-party at 21 Social. We’ll keep the music down low and the drinks flowing all night.

Belfast

Guide

Build takes place in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, its cobbled streets and alleys lined with studios, galleries, venues, pubs, and restaurants. Listed are some of our favorite places to eat, drink, and be merry, all within walking distance.